Cathy Steinhauser to STRS Board: We need to clean house and get STRS back on track to be better than it has been the past several decades!

From Cathy Steinhauser

December 14, 2023

Cathy Steinhauser – 35 yrs., satellite teacher w/Pickaway-Ross CTC in the Circleville City School District – Family & Consumer Sciences.

I found it very interesting that as part of the November 2023 STRS Board mtg. there was education for you about being a fiduciary.  Do you remember being told by, I think her name was Ms. Decker, she said that you can be removed for breaching fiduciary duties??  How many months have I been stressing to you about the seriousness of your responsibility of being fiduciaries…I will tell you…11 meetings so far!  And YES, I’m going to remind you again, so now the total is 12 meetings!!

FIDUCIARY - “A person who acts on behalf of another person or persons, putting their client’s interests ahead of their own, with a duty to preserve good faith and trust.  Being a fiduciary requires being bound both LEGALLY AND ETHICALLY to act in others' best interests.”  You are now being more carefully scrutinized as you attend, participate, and make critical decisions for this teacher pension. Putting STRS staff and the investment group before considering the effects on the teachers will come with consequences. You have been schooled in how you are to conduct yourselves as proper fiduciaries so you must consider how you are going to take care of us teachers when you cast your vote on critical issues.  STRS exists to pay benefits because teachers are the top priority in this pension but have not been treated as such for over 20 years. Get your priorities straight – teachers come first!  One thing that really bothers me is when many of us teachers discovered that the executive director wrote his own contract and it was approved by only the chairman of the board.  I have seen a copy of these contracts and this single signee by the chair has happened too many times!! My husband sits on the Scioto Paint Valley Mental Health Board in Chillicothe, and he informed me that ALL board members of any institution are to approve the contract by their signatures and if all signatures aren’t there, the contract is renegotiated!! For one board member to be the sole signee is a breach of fiduciary duty and those board members currently serving who have done so should resign immediately.  Don’t accept the position or run for the position for serving our board if you don’t know what is involved in being a fiduciary.

As I listened to last month’s meeting virtually, I was sickened to hear that our STRS leader was allegedly accused by several STRS staff members for inappropriate behavior. Colleen Marshall, Channel 4 has reported on the mess going on at STRS for a few years now.  Despicable behavior of our leadership in this pension is unacceptable! Inflicting verbal abuse, harassment and violence on staff sounds like a seriously disturbed individual who needs to resign or be fired.  There is no place in this pension for such a narcissist. “He does not have the best interest of the members at the forefront of his decision making”. I am sorry that staff members had to endure this but I am extremely grateful for their courage in speaking up.  There should be a completely anonymous survey of 100% of the staff to determine the percentage of those who endured this treatment over the years.  If the investigating authority in charge of this case isn’t screening the staff, they should be.  We need to clean house and get STRS back on track to be better than it has been the past several decades!  

Where has the ORSC been through all this? They seem to meet very irregularly because the chair keeps canceling and if this group gets compensation from STRS, they need to return it because they aren’t doing their job. Just because the other pensions are doing better than STRS doesn’t mean they don’t have to meet.